Forward Deployed Engagement Manager

Nexus Cognitive Technologies•Atlanta, GA

4d•Remote

About The Position

NexusOne is the converged data platform for the AI era, designed to be composable, built on open-source, and AI-native. It provides a unified data experience across mainframes, data lakes, warehouses, and streaming systems, allowing enterprises to leverage their existing infrastructure while enabling AI agents with full context. The company emphasizes sovereign data, interoperable systems, and decoupled intelligence, avoiding rip-and-replace strategies and lengthy transformations. NexusOne integrates over 85 open-source tools and utilizes AI-native automations for deployment and self-healing. The company boasts rapid growth, processing significant data volumes for major financial institutions and telecommunication companies, and is backed by Insight Partners. They are a team of over 100 people across the US and India, headquartered in Atlanta, focused on impactful execution.

Requirements

5–8 years in a customer-facing solution delivery, consulting, or forward-deployed role (e.g., Forward Deployed Engineer, Engagement Manager, Solutions Architect, Technical Account Manager, Customer Engineering Lead, Implementation Lead).
Operationally rigorous with a strong track record of delivering customer outcomes, not just activity.
Experience owning a customer's outcome end-to-end at an enterprise account.
Precise communication skills across all levels, from engineers to C-suite executives.
Ability to translate customer requirements into buildable engineering tasks and engineering trade-offs into executive decisions.
Problem ownership mindset; taking responsibility until issues are resolved.
Structural muscle of a top-tier consulting engagement manager (client management, structured thinking, exec presence, written clarity).
Entrepreneurial streak and a founder mindset; ability to build playbooks.
Experience within a startup or scale-up engineering organization (Series A through D).
Technical fluency to read architecture documents, ask pertinent questions, and participate in engineering discussions.
Experience with modern program tooling, specifically Linear and Notion, or ability to adapt from other tools like Jira/Asana/Confluence.
Strong written communication skills for status updates, postmortems, and memos.
High agency; proactive in closing loops, defining playbooks, and providing constructive pushback.
Data, cloud, or platform infrastructure background strongly preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience at Palantir (FDE), Anthropic / OpenAI (FDE / Solutions), Databricks (Field Eng / CE), Stripe (Implementation / Solutions), Ramp / Mercury (Solutions), Scale AI (FDE), or comparable forward-deployed environments.
Direct gross margin or P&L responsibility on accounts.
Engineering background (CS degree, engineering IC role, or credible technical foundation).

Responsibilities

Own the delivery and technical operations for a portfolio of strategic NX1 accounts, translating customer business problems into platform requirements.
Design and drive engagements to successful customer outcomes, managing solution delivery from start to finish.
Manage the rollout program, solution architecture, roadmap commitments, documentation, customer health signals, engagement margin, and feedback loop to engineering.
Own account ownership, delivery, and gross margin for a portfolio of 2-4 strategic accounts, each valued at $5-10M in revenue.
Manage the P&L for assigned accounts, driving against deliverables and gross margin, and identifying risks.
Cultivate customer-side executive relationships (VP of Data/CDO/CTO) and partner with the CRO on renewal and expansion strategies.
Establish the delivery program for new engagements, including roadmap, milestones, dependencies, governance, and communication cadence.
Manage the weekly operating rhythm, including internal stand-ups, customer syncs, executive readouts, and escalation reviews.
Own the documentation surface for each engagement, including program plans, decision logs, RAID registers, status reports, and runbooks.
Translate customer business problems into NX1 engineering requirements and communicate engineering trade-offs back to the customer.
Collaborate with Solution Architects for deep architecture needs and Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) for build tasks.
Maintain technical commitments regarding scope, roadmap asks, and custom builds.
Define customer 'winning' criteria within the first 60 days and instrument success metrics.
Develop customer health signals to proactively identify and address potential issues.
Conduct quarterly business reviews that provide significant value to the customer's executive team.
Convert customer pain points into product roadmap input and ensure feedback loops are closed.
Partner with the CRO on expansion opportunities, leveraging technical credibility and customer relationships.
Manage the cost-to-serve for engagements, distinguishing between managed services, paid one-offs, and roadmap asks.
Identify and escalate early signals of churn risk.
Develop the renewal narrative based on delivered value and future potential.
Build the engagement playbook for NX1, codifying best practices for future hires.
Influence the operating model between Forward Engineering, the MSO function, and Sales.